


Where Are We Going?

by acaseofthemondays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, I'm so sorry, Just Straight Angst, Pain, but then it will get better, i can't leave it sad, it's gonna get ugly, it's not in my nature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-09-26 20:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9921419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaseofthemondays/pseuds/acaseofthemondays
Summary: The Future





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing was sparked by a dream I had the night before which I talk about in [this post.](http://holdmecloseandfast.tumblr.com/post/157656089518/i-had-a-weird-fucking-dream-last-night)
> 
> I'm not gonna lie. It's pretty dark. Trigger warnings for suicide mention and major character death. 
> 
> As dark as it is though, I have some ideas percolating for a second part that would give it a happy ending, so if anybody needs/wants that, let me know. Otherwise this is a stand alone piece.

The years had not been kind to Steve Rogers. And there had been so many years. 

He was the last of them, the last Avenger living. All the others had died over time, their bodies slowing as they aged, leaving them bloodied on different battlefields across the years. Even Thor had met his end, proving that even a god can be felled. 

Only Banner escaped dying in the fight. He actually was given the dignified death of old age. In the end, he and the Hulk had come to an agreement, allowing Bruce to pass quietly in the night in the warmth of his bed. 

Then there was only him and Bucky left. The years churned past and they found that the serum preserved them still, slowing their aging to infinitesimal increments spread over decades. But they were both so  _ tired _ . 

Some days, it felt as if picking up the shield was an unbearable weight that he could no longer shoulder. They were both so tired of fighting in wars that they weren't even sure were for the right reasons anymore. There was no truth or justice, no innocents to defend, only endless legacies of cold eyed men in bespoke suits aiming them at the next target. 

In the end, Bucky couldn't take it anymore. He broke under the strain of it, all the fighting, all the wars, the nightmares and the blood that he  _ still  _ couldn't wash off his hands. The realization that they weren't aging fast enough, that they had  _ decades _ left of usefulness to those dead-eyed men was what finally sent him over the edge. So he put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. 

Steve was across the country when it happened, schmoozing some rich Californian that the US government was just dying to get in bed with. He didn't sleep for three weeks after he got the call. 

The funeral was a blur, a traditional Irish wake and Catholic service. Closed casket of course. He spent most of the time vomiting in an abandoned supply closet in the basement of the church. 

He blamed himself for Bucky's death. His friend was never meant for war, had never even wanted to fight back in the 40s when he'd first been shipped off. For all that he was excellent at being the dark underbelly to Steve's shining and pure Cap persona, a master at carrying out the dirty work, it was never the core of who Bucky was as a man. No matter how dirty his hands got, Bucky’s heart was pure. He wasn't born to be a murderer, no matter how good he was at it. 

But he did it. First out of duty to country, then out of duty to Steve, and then for decades he did it without consent. Until finally he entered the killing fields again out of his sense of responsibility to Steve. 

It was too much though, the death he wreaked upon the earth warring with the gentleness of his soul. It was too fucking much and Steve should have put down the shield and taken Bucky and found some quiet place in the mountains where Bucky’d never have to kill again. 

They could have grown old as slowly as the mountains around them. Letting God’s green earth heal the brokenness inside them. It would have been a fitting ending. 

But Steve had been too blind to his friend’s pain, blinded by responsibility that he couldn't even say he believed in anymore. So it was his fault that Bucky was dead instead of reading a book in the shade of some tree, aging gracefully and far from the stench of blood slicked battlefields. 

With Bucky gone, there was nothing left for Steve to do but keep fighting, keep hoping that the work he did, that the things they had him do were shaping a better future. 

He fought and fought until finally his body started to show the signs of age. He moved just a little bit slower, became injured just a little bit easier, and took just a little bit longer to heal. 

Top Brass made the decision to pull him from the front lines. No more fighting for him, from there on out it was public speaking events, gala attendances, public service announcements, press conferences and the like. He was back to being the performing monkey. 

But he was losing his effectiveness. It was partially due to the deadness behind his eyes, but mostly it was because he was no longer relevant to the current generation. They were too far removed from the history of World War II, his deeds from that time forgotten, undercutting the foundation of respect for him that previous generations had been raised on. Even the age of the Avengers had been so long ago that no one really cared anymore. 

When the government realized his appearances had become meaningless, they retired him, tucking him away into some shoebox apartment with a monthly stipend. The world forgot all about Steve Rogers. He was fine with that. He felt like forgetting about Steve Rogers, too. 

The years passed, blurring together in an endless haze until one day the landlord came knocking on his door, demanding three months of late rent and threatening eviction. Steve checked his accounts. They were empty. It looked as if enough time had passed that even the financial division of SHIELD had forgotten his existence. 

He could have called and had it sorted. But he couldn't bring himself to care. He had been near catatonic for nearly twenty years now, why kick up a fuss? 

So he grabbed his warmest coat and most comfortable boots and left the place that he had lived in for twenty years but had never felt like home. He walked the streets aimlessly for hours until dark descended and he found himself crouching for warmth beneath a small overpass in the city. 

He stayed there for a long time. Enough time for his hair and beard to grow wild, for his body to be caked in a film of grime and his clothes to hang in shreds against his body. 

The days and months and years blended together, watching people pass in front of him on their way to and from work. They never saw him, their eyes glazing over, their world too large to allow them to see the dirty man huddling into the cement. They didn't want to see him. That was alright with him though. He didn't really want to be seen anyway. If they did, they might have wondered who he was, and he didn't want them to wonder because he wasn't sure what the answer was anymore. 

He had a name once. 

An important one. 

Once. 

But now he wasn't sure what it was. There was only the constant chant that thrummed in the back of his mind, occasionally spilling out into the outside world from his tongue. 

“I'm alone, I'm alone, I'm alone.”

Oh.

That's right. 

That's who he was. 

**Alone** .


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't leave the first chapter as is. I just couldn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for violence and attempted assault.

Why on earth had she ever decided to move to this god forsaken city? D.C. was grim and dreary in the winter and a miserable soup of sweat and regret in the summer. Sure, summers in south Texas weren’t much different, but the winters were milder and the food was certainly better. 

At that thought, Magdalena was suddenly struck with a deep homesick ache for her abuela's carne guisada. If she got home at a decent hour tonight, she might just have to recreate it. Of course, it was never as good as Abuela’s, but it would at least taste a bit like home and her childhood. 

Maggie tightened her coat around her shoulders, ducking her face as a gust of frigid wind funneled through the underpass she was crossing through, tearing at her clothes and hair. She turned to see if the homeless man who lived under this particular bridge was in his usual spot today. She thought he would surely have relocated to a more hospitable location with less of a wind tunnel effect, yet there he was, in the same place she saw him every day since she’d moved to the city six months ago. 

It hurt her heart a little to always see him there. She knew what it was like to have nothing. Before she’d gone to live with her grandmother when she was ten, she’d spent several years living out of a beat up Camry with her mother. Even with as little as she’d had, at least the car had blocked the wind. 

She pursed her lips in determination. She was definitely making the carne guisada tonight, decent hour or no, and she’d be bringing the man a steaming bowl of it the next morning. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d brought him food. Whenever she had leftovers from her lunch, she liked to leave them with him on her way home. He never responded, not verbally anyway, but he would move slowly to accept the food as if he was a strangely shaped concrete outcropping of the bridge suddenly come to life.

Maggie said a silent prayer as she continued on her journey to work, asking the Blessed Virgin to watch over the man and all the other lost souls of this city. 

When she finally reached the blissfully warm lobby of the Pentagon building, she heaved a relieved sigh and dug her I.D. badge out of her purse and then set her bag on the conveyor belt to pass through the security inspection. She always hated passing through these security checks. She’d never done an illegal thing in her life, but for some reason she always felt like she was acting guilty. She also had a thing about not liking people pawing through her things. It was invasive and made her shoulders twitch at the thought. 

When she’d first started her career as a data analyst, she never  _ dreamed _ she’d be working at the Pentagon someday, crunching numbers for the U.S. Department of Defense. Prior to her government employment, she’d only ever worked for private businesses based out of San Benito, but after the divorce she’d needed a fresh start, and fast. She’d had two large glasses of wine when she’d made the decision, but D.C. was far enough away from Robbie and his ridiculously large and pervasive extended family that she wouldn’t have to worry about seeing the accusation in any of their eyes wherever she went. Plus the pay was pretty damn good considering it was for the government. 

Her background check was squeaky clean and her previous employers had all left glowing recommendations, so exactly one month to the day after her divorce was finalized, Maggie had moved her ass halfway across the country and was starting fresh. It was going to be the start of a grand adventure, a new chapter in her life that would be one for the history books, she was sure of it. 

Turns out, not even working at the Pentagon can make data analysis exciting. Imagine that. 

Maggie slid into her cubicle, firing up her desktop and then meandered over to the office kitchen to grab a cup of coffee before starting her day. She sat down into the supposedly orthopedic desk chair, sweeping the silky, dark brown strands of her hair up into a bun, and opened up email inbox with a resigned sigh.

Every day had been nearly identical for the last six months: go to work, go home, eat, unwind, go to bed, wake up the next day and do it all over again. She occasionally would join a few friendly coworkers for happy hour or even dinner, but she mostly kept to herself. She’d never really mastered the whole “people skills” thing. Numbers were always significantly easier for her to understand. Numbers were predictable, calculable, reliable. People were  _ not _ . 

People abandoned you, or chose themselves and their addictions before you. People would leave you weeping and bruised, curled up in your own bathtub and then kiss you with cheerful ( _ lying _ ) smiles the next morning. People grew old and died when you needed them most. 

So yeah, she kept to herself, and that was fine by her. 

After the long hours at work and the even colder return trip home, Maggie collapsed onto her sofa, kicking off her kitten heels and contemplating just passing out right there in the little living room of her apartment. It would have been perfectly within her rights to do, she'd worked hard and earned an early night in, but her thoughts kept returning to the man under the bridge and whether or not he'd be able to sleep at all tonight with how cold it must be. 

With a resigned groan, she rose to her feet, pulling the ingredients out of her fridge and pantry and falling into the muscle memory of making her grandmother’s carne guisada. 

The next morning, she reheated a large portion and scooped it into a Tupperware container, placing it in an insulated bag to keep it hot until she could give it to Bridge-man, as she had taken to calling him. 

The wind had died down significantly from the day before and Maggie was grateful for the lack of wind chill as she walked briskly from her little apartment. She'd left slightly earlier than usual in her anxiousness to make sure Bridge-man had survived the night, and she was surprised to see how quiet and unpopulated her walk was leaving just half an hour earlier. 

It was significantly more peaceful without the constant bustle of strangers. She might have to start leaving at this time every morning. 

As the bridge came into sight, her feet moved a little quicker until she was passing under and spotted the man huddled in his corner. She slowed at her approach, not wanting to startle him, and crouched down a couple feet from him to pull the container from her bag. 

She was pleased to see the steam rising off the container as soon as she pulled it free. She scooped up the plastic utensils she'd thrown in along with a packet of wet wipes and then turned her attention to the older man. 

Up close like this, she could see how truly neglected he was, years of dirt and grime caked his frame and a grizzled beard grew over his face, the brown streaked through with gray. His hair color was hard to determine, as filthy as it was, but she thought it might have been some kind of blond once. 

She cleared her throat, waiting for the man to meet her eyes. Normally she just set her leftovers down near him and kept walking, wanting to preserve his dignity, but this morning she wanted to make sure he was alright, maybe ask if she could bring him a blanket for these colder temperatures. 

“Excuse me, sir? I thought you might like a hot meal,” she held out her offering with a tentative smile. “Made it myself last night,” she said, giving it a little shake. 

His arms unfurled slowly from his chest, shaking hands reaching out to grasp her offering before tucking the container and utensils tight to his chest. 

“Is there anything else I can get you, sir? A blanket? Anything?” 

He shook his head incrementally, keeping his eyes downcast and turning his body partially away from her, tucking back into the wall a little tighter. 

“Okay,” Maggie murmured softly. He was clearly finished with their interaction so she rose and continued on her way to work, pleased he'd taken the meal but still worried about him surviving in this weather. Though, he had probably endured many winters under that bridge, and he hadn't succumbed to sickness or death in all that time. Maybe he'd be alright on his own. She really hoped so.  

The start of her work day was kicked off with an influx of spending reports that she was required to sift through and organize into something comprehensible. It took the entirety of her day and fairly late into the evening before she finally finished. 

She rubbed her fingers over her burning eyes and rose from her chair, body creaking and cracking from long hours of disuse. She packed up her things and turned off her desktop, making her way to the front lobby and exiting through security. 

Dark had fully descended when she stepped out into the cold night air and for some reason the thought that she'd missed out on the meager hours of winter daylight settled in her gut like a rock. Something like wasted potential soured on the back of her tongue. She swallowed against it and urged her weary feet onto the path back home, her thoughts turning to Bridge-man and whether or not he'd enjoyed the meal she'd made. 

Her walk home was nearly deserted, but when she was about thirty yards away from Bridge-man's home, she spotted two men loitering under a light pole. Out of habit, she put a little more steel in her spine, a little more purpose in her walk, and her face fell into one of a distinctly unfriendly nature. In her experience, all men were predators until proven differently, and adding an edge of awareness and aggression to her demeanor went a long way in deterring unwanted attention. 

“Hey mama, where you going so late?” 

Of course, it wasn't a foolproof plan. 

Maggie kept her eyes straight forward, acknowledging neither their words nor their presence, picking up her pace slightly. 

“Hey lady, my friend asked you a question. You think you're too good to answer?” 

Maggie's heartbeat rocketed at the belligerent tone in the second man’s voice and again she hurried her pace. She’d just reached the underpass when she felt a large hand clamp down on her wrist, jerking and spinning her to face its owner. 

“Look bitch, you fucking answer when I talk to you. Now where the fuck do you think you're going in such a hurry?” The man drew her arm up above her head, pulling her face level with his, a nasty leer plastered over his features. Behind him, his friend sauntered closer, arms crossing cockily over his chest. 

Fuck this. Maggie was done being someone else's plaything. Her divorce was evidence enough of that. With a burst of adrenaline, she ripped her wrist from the man's grasp, jerking her knee up into his groin and then grinding the heel of her shoe into his instep on the downward swing of her leg. 

The man doubled over with a pained cry and Maggie turned tail and ran as fast as her legs could carry her, the rushing in her ears almost drowning out the sound of the men screaming curses and following after her.

She didn't get far before she felt her hair being jerked back with a painful yank, followed by a heavy fist coming down hard across her face. The blow dazed her, but she'd taken worse before. The secondary punch to her gut had her gasping for breath and collapsing to her knees. 

She was shoved roughly onto her back, her head snapping against the concrete sharply enough to make her see stars. She tried to suck in enough air to let loose a scream, but a hand clamped down on her mouth while the heavy weight of one of the men settled on her thighs. 

“You stupid cunt! I was just trying to be nice. All I wanted was a friendly conversation and you had to go a be a total bitch about it. So now I'm gonna have to teach you a fucking lesson on how to behave when a man speaks to you.” 

Maggie struggled under the hands that held her down and kept her silent, glaring daggers at her attackers. When the one sitting on her started pawing at the button of her pants, she couldn't help the terrified whine that curled up her throat. 

Her mind whited out as panic and horror infected her brain, sending her thoughts scurrying in a thousand directions at once. Her blood rushed in her ears drowning out everything except the frantic hiss of air passing through her lungs. 

Then, between one heartbeat and the next, the hands on her mouth and hair were gone, as was the man they'd belonged to.  The second man still sitting on her jerked his head to the left, searching for his companion.

“What the fu-”

Maggie saw a figure move behind her final attacker, gripping the man by the back of his jacket and ripping him away from her. With her legs suddenly free, she scrabbled backwards away from the man and this new unknown variable. 

Her eyes spotted the first attacker sprawled out and bleeding nearby. What the fuck was  _ happening _ ? The sound of flesh hitting flesh caught her attention and her eyes were drawn to the sight of the second asshole being punched mercilessly by whoever it was that had stepped in to help her. Then with a final mighty kick to the chest, Asshole #2 was sent flying through the air to land thirty feet away. 

That should not have been humanly possible. 

Her Hero™, seemingly satisfied with his work of knocking out both Asshole #1 and #2, turned back towards her, approaching slowly with hands stretched out non-threateningly in front of him. As he got closer, the light from a nearby lamppost filtered through the underpass to cast a soft glow over his face. 

Puta madre, it was _Bridge-man_. 

Maggie watched slack jawed as the older man approached her, so shocked by the discovery of this seemingly harmless man's ability to kick some major ass that she didn't fight him when he lifted her bodily to her feet. He stepped away from her quickly when he was satisfied she could stand on her own and bent to retrieve her purse from where she'd discarded it during her struggle. He pushed it into her numb fingers and then crossed his arms protectively over his belly, keeping his eyes downcast throughout the entire exchange. 

There was a small moment of calm and relief before it was shattered by the roiling waves of nausea as her mind finally processed what had almost happened to her. She turned away from Bridge-man, bending at the waist to empty her stomach on to the road. She felt a steady hand cup her elbow and another sweep her hair back away from her face. 

When her heaving stopped and she was able to stand upright without fear of the nausea returning, the hands on her person immediately disappeared. Maggie wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and turned to thank the man, only to see he had retreated back to his little concrete alcove, curling up into the wall as she had seen him do every day. 

She spared a quick glance at the men still out cold on the other end of the underpass and made her way to Bridge-man, crouching low in front of him and extending a hesitant hand. 

“Sir?” 

No response. 

“Sir, I’d like to thank you for...for stopping…” her throat closed up over the words and she had to swallow a few times to continue. “For stopping those men.” Her savior remained curled up into himself, not showing any sign that he'd heard her. 

Maggie's eyes flitted nervously to the men again. “Look, you really ought to move to a different place tonight. Those men won't be happy when they wake up and I don't want you to get hurt because of me. Isn't there somewhere you can go? Friends or family who would take you in for a night?”

The man flinched at her words and began mumbling incoherently under his breath. 

“I'm sorry, I can't understand-”

She was cut off when the man's hand shot out to grip her wrist faster than her eyes could catch and for the first time he looked directly into her eyes. 

“I'm  _ alone _ , I'm alone, I'm alone.” He uttered the phrase fervently and on loop as his aching, weary eyes bore into hers. It broke something inside of her to see so much pain in such beautiful blue eyes. 

“Not anymore,” she heard herself say, resolve sinking into her bones. She wrapped her hand over his where it was stilled tightly looped and tugged at his arm as she rose to standing. 

“Come with me. Please, sir?” He shook his head and made to retract his arm but her next words stopped him. “I have more of what I brought you for breakfast this morning. If you're hungry? I just want you somewhere safe.” 

He rose slowly, letting her keep her grip on his wrist as she led him out from under the bridge and towards her home. It felt a bit like leading a lost lamb home and Maggie wasn't sure if that said more about her or him as a person. 

The walk home was silent except for their shuffling feet against the sidewalk. She had so many questions for him but she kept her tongue still in the hopes that she wouldn't frighten him off. He also smelled pretty ripe so she was consciously avoiding breathing through her nose and talking would have made that considerably more difficult. 

As she was slotting the key into her front door, the realization that she was  _ bringing a homeless stranger into her house _ finally hit. Had she lost her mind? He might have helped her at the bridge but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a murderer or a thief or a coke addict or, or, or…

Maggie straightened her shoulders and shook her swirling thoughts away. It was too late to send him back and she’d already made the offer. Abuela would be rolling over in her grave if she saw Maggie send a neglected man back into the cold without even giving him a hot meal first. So she let them both in, flipping on lights as she went and making a beeline for her kitchen, digging out an ice pack to lay across her now throbbing cheek and another for the back of her head. 

Bridge-man looked significantly larger now that he was standing in her little breakfast nook, eyes slowly scanning the space and still holding himself around his middle. A tall man, and inhumanly strong, with the saddest blue-green eyes she’d ever seen. 

“Um, would you like to sit down while I get dinner heated?” She gestured to her little kitchen table and watched as he pulled out a chair and sank into it, hands hanging limply in his lap and eyes boring into the floor. 

Satisfied that he wasn’t about to murder her, at least not at that moment, Maggie pulled out the carne guisada from the night before and started reheating it on her little stovetop. She pulled out some of the dough she’d made and fridged earlier and began rolling out tortillas to cook in her skillet while waiting on the rest of dinner to reheat. She sliced a few limes and shredded a nice big pile of cheese and went to pull out a handful of cilantro to chop up when a thought occurred to her. “Hey, buddy, what are your opinions on cilantro? I know it’s not for everybody…”

He just looked at her blankly from kitchen table. 

“Oookay, I’ll just chop a little up for you to try. I won’t be offended if you spit it back out if it tastes like soap to you.” She turned back to her chopping board, no longer expecting anything resembling conversation from the man. 

She nearly chopped her damn finger off when a voice, creaky with disuse, sounded softly from her kitchen table. “I’ve eaten soap before. I think that green stuff can’t be any worse than that.” 

Maggie kept her eyes on her chopping board, but she didn’t miss the hint of dry humor in the man’s voice. She returned to her chopping, quelling the urge to dance around her kitchen in triumph over this tiny piece of progress. 

“You’re probably right. I’ve never eaten soap but there was a time in my life where dumpster gourmet was a constant on the menu. I promise you, cilantro is  _ much _ better than that.” 

“You lived on the streets?” His voice cracked on every other syllable. It was painful to hear, like rocks scraping against each other. 

Maggie nodded. “When I was a kid. Lived out of my mom’s car from the time I was four until I was ten.” She paused in her tale. It wasn’t one that she normally shared. Bridge-man must have sensed her reluctance or just didn’t feel like talking anymore because he remained silent. 

She really needed to figure out something else to call him. 

“My name is Magdalena Salcedo, by the way. You can call me Maggie if you want. Most people do.” She scraped the cilantro onto a serving tray next to the limes and hot tortillas and turned to set the chopping board into the kitchen sink. 

“Maggie,” Bridge-man murmured. “Nice name.” 

A small smile slipped across her face as she rinsed her hands and dried them on a dishtowel. “Thanks. You got a name?” She watched him from the corner of her eye, hoping the question wasn’t too invasive. His brows drew together and his shoulders hunched as he seemed to curl in on himself further. 

“Um, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s completely fine, but I can’t keep calling you Bridge-man. Seems a little disrespectful. You can make something up. I won’t mind.”

He seemed to chew on her words for a moment before responding. “James. You can call me James.” 

“James it is,” she said with a smile while ladling out the carne guisada into two bowls. She set the bowls on the table, followed by the serving tray and silverware. “Can I get you something to drink, James? I’ve got water and…” she went through her mental checklist,”orange juice. That’s about it, sorry.”

“Water’s fine.”

Maggie nodded and retrieved two glasses of water for them, before seating herself in the chair across from him. She started to tuck hungrily into her meal when she noticed James was still sitting there quietly wringing his hands in his lap. “Go ahead, mijo. Eat up.” 

She watched as he reached for his silverware and stabbed a tender piece of beef from his bowl. He sniffed it subtly and then popped it into his mouth. She knew the moment the flavor hit him, because he gave a small grunt and his eyelids fluttered. Maggie turned her attention to her own meal then, a satisfied smile playing at her lips. Everyone loved Abuela’s carne guisada. 

She showed him how to stack the pieces of beef on his tortilla along with the cheese, cilantro, and lime juice and then they both fell into silence, digging into their meals. Maggie finished her bowl with a content sigh and looked up to see James staring at his empty bowl, chewing at his lip, shoulders hunched again. She recognized that look. 

“Let me get you some more, James.” She grabbed his bowl and ladled out another healthy serving before returning it to him with a flourish. “You can eat as much as you like. I’m, uh, I’m gonna go get cleaned up and change. Call me if you need anything.”

James nodded curtly and immediately dug into his meal. Good. Her grandmother would have loved that kind of appetite from any visitor. 

When Maggie returned from her shower, mild sobbing breakdown included, she felt significantly better. Being clean and in comfy clothes always did wonders for her mental health. Returning to the kitchen, she found that James had polished off her entire pot of carne guisada, and every single one of the tortillas. She’d made a recipe that usually could feed up to ten people at least twice. Where the hell had he fit all that food? Must have a hollow leg or an incredibly fast metabolism. 

The abundance of food seemed to have done him a world of good though. His skin, beneath the grime, looked to be returning to a healthy glow instead of the sickly pallor of earlier that evening. He also seemed to be moving faster, having cleaned her table and entire kitchen while she’d been gone. Speaking of cleaning…

“Hey James, um, would you like to maybe take a shower?” 

He glanced down at himself, seeming to notice his rather filthy demeanor for the first time. “I must stink to high heaven, huh?” She didn’t miss the humor in his voice or the light that seemed to be returning to his eyes.

“Well, um, you know.” She scuffed her bare feet against the tile awkwardly, not wanting to make eye contact. 

“Yeah, a shower would be nice. Thank you, ma'am.” He paused for a moment, seeming to consider his next words. “I heard you crying...are you gonna be okay?” 

Maggie's cheeks flushed. “Oh geez, was I that loud? Sorry, no yeah I'm fine. I'll be fine. It just all kind of...hit me.”

James twisted the ends of his ratty jacket. “You weren't...loud. I've got good hearing.” 

Maggie hummed noncommittally and motioned for him to follow her to the guest bath. She pulled out some fresh towels for him and showed him where all her soaps and shampoos were. She also pulled out an unopened toothbrush and some toothpaste.  

“Um, James, if you’ll put your clothes outside the door I can wash them for you? You can borrow my robe while you wait for them to finish.”

“Not much point. You'd be better off burning them.”

Maggie snorted at that. He had a point. “Alright, we’ll chunk ‘em and I'll buy you some new clothes in the morning.”

“Oh, no that's not...you don't have to…” James trailed off, eyes glued to where his hands still tugged at his jacket. 

“I don't mind. You’ll feel better in fresh clothes. Go ahead and throw those ones out. I'll go make up the sofa bed.” Maggie made a hasty retreat from the bathroom before the awkwardness of the situation became too much to bear. James seemed to be about as bad as her when it came to people skills, the poor guy. 

\------

Standing naked in front of the steamed up bathroom mirror, James noticed several strange things. 

Being clean again was a strange thing. James hadn’t even realized how much he missed the fresh feeling of scrubbing himself raw, his pale skin flushed and blotchy from heat and friction. 

It was strange being called James, too. He didn’t know why he’d picked that name. Hearing it again brought equal pinpricks of joy and sorrow to his heart. He was Steve. Steven Grant Rogers. He had forgotten that for a very long time, but that’s who he’d been born. That was the name his body had worn for decades longer than was natural. Though he remembered, he still couldn’t bear to take up that name again. 

Another strange thing was having a full belly. As his dusty mind sifted back through his haze of memories, he didn’t think he’d had a full belly since before Bu-... Since before he’d been left alone. After Buck had gone, Steve had kind of...fallen out of the habit of feeding himself. Even before he’d been evicted and started living on the street, he hadn’t the motivation to do much in the way of feeding himself, or self-care in general. And instead of wasting away and dying like a damn normal person, the serum kept right on trucking, keeping him alive but...fuzzy.

He was clear headed now, or as clear headed as he’d been in decades. The influx of badly needed calories teamed with the serum to return his body to fighting condition and brain to, well, something bordering on useful. 

The strangest thing by far though, was looking in the mirror to see just how  _ old _ he’d gotten. Sure he’d been alive for at least a couple centuries now, but the last time he’d looked in a mirror he looked closer to forty, not sixty. Of course, the beard and hair didn’t really help matters. All that gray...when had he started to go gray? He tisked and tried running his fingers through his matted hair. Even with the hot shower, the knots remained. He looked like a damned hippy with all that hair. His mother would have whipped his backside if she’d seen him like this.

Steve heaved a sigh and pulled the robe on that Maggie had left for him before peeking his head around the corner of the door. 

“Um, ma’am?” he called out. 

The woman who had been so kind to him appeared at the other end of the hall, dressed in comfy looking flannel pajamas and unfolding what looked like a fitted sheet. “You need something, James?”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t happen to have some scissors or something? I’d like to clean up a bit, maybe shave. Get rid of the birds nest living on my head.”

Steve watched Maggie bite down on her lips, attempting to hold back a smile, but the spark of humor in her light brown eyes was impossible to smother. He couldn’t really blame her for laughing at him. He really did look like a complete mess. If he’d have been there, Bucky woulda...well he woulda given him hell for it. And then probably worked his way into Maggie’s flannel pants. Not that Maggie seemed the type to just take strange men to bed. She seemed very, well, she seemed like she was a lady, not just some dame. 

Steve blushed furiously at the line his idiotic thoughts had gone to. For once he was glad for the beard, maybe she wouldn’t notice how red-

“Mijo, are you feeling well? You look a little flushed,” she commented, handing him a large pair of shears. 

Steve cleared his throat. “Uh, just the heat from the shower probably. I feel fine. Thank you for the scissors I’ll just go uh…” he waved the the scissors awkwardly at the bathroom door and disappeared inside, closing the door firmly and stepping back into the tub. 

\---------

James was cursing in her bathroom. It was soft, but she could still hear it along with the metal snick of her scissors. Did he need help? Should she help him? Was that too invasive? How much privacy is required when one is cutting one’s own hair after what has obviously been many years? What was the standard social protocol for this situation?

Fuck if she knew. 

Maggie knocked softly at the bathroom door and both the snicking and bitching stopped. “Hey James, I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to be having some difficulty...do you...uh, would you like some...help?” 

She heard the start of a muttered expletive and then James was calling for her to come in. Opening the door, she saw he was standing in her tub, half cut off strands of matted hair scattered around his feet and robe covered shoulders. Honestly, he looked like some kind of sad, old lion that a toddler had gone after with a pair of safety scissors. She blinked slowly, trying to keep herself composed. Dignity, she needed to treat him with dignity.

“Why don’t you let me have a go at that hair.” She stepped closer to the tub, holding her hand out expectantly. 

James pursed his lips, frustration and slight embarrassment creasing his brow, but he handed her the scissors all the same and turned to sit on the edge of her tub. Maggie stared down at the mass of hair that hung slightly past his shoulders except for the places where he’d hacked bits of it off haphazardly. With a shake of her head, she gathered his hair back to the base of his skull as best she could, cutting off most of the length in one go. From there, she made slow but steady progress, trimming it all to about an inch from his scalp. 

She dusted off his shoulders and swept up the clippings, tossing them in the trash before returning the bathroom with a fine toothed comb and a bottle of delousing shampoo she had leftover from an unfortunate incident back when she worked as a nanny to pay for college. Never let small children comb and braid your hair. Just don’t do it. You  _ will _ have a bad time. 

“James, I’m gonna need to wash your hair again. It’ll help get the last of the snarls out...and, uh, other stuff.”

James glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Lice?”

“Yup,” she affirmed with a wince. 

“Of course,” James muttered, his face falling into his hands. 

“Hey, buddy, we’ve all been there. I had lice for like three years straight as a kid and for a short stint as an adult.” She patted lightly at his shoulder. 

James looked up at her, an eyebrow quirked in questioning. Maggie sighed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Just know, people do not pay nannies  _ near _ what they’re worth considering what they go through.” 

James’ other eyebrow rose to match the first and a little huff that could maybe, slightly count as a laugh forced its way out of his chest.  

Maggie directed him to bend over her bathroom sink and began scrubbing the delousing shampoo through his hair, combing it through and getting out the snarls, rinsing it, and scrubbing again. With the final rinsing complete, she handed him a fresh towel to dry his hair along with a fresh razor and left him to tend to his beard so she could finish making up his bed. 

Once the sofa was suitably done up for company, Maggie slumped into her kitchen chair with a glass of water and two large pain pills. Her face, skull, and stomach were all starting to ache rather insistently and the strain of day and the late hour were not helping things in the slightest. She swallowed the pills down and lay her head down on her folded arms, eyes falling shut of their own accord. 

She must have dozed for a short while because the next thing she knew, there was a handsome older man sitting across from her at the table wearing her lavender bathrobe and clearing his throat awkwardly. It took Maggie a solid thirty seconds for her brain to catch up with the fact that this guy and Bridge-man were one and the same. 

She let out a low whistle. “Ay g ü ero, who knew you were so handsome under all that hair?” Yep, those pain pills were definitely kicking in. 

James’ eyes went wide and then a bright blush lit up his cheeks. Maggie’s own cheeks fired at her slip of tongue and for causing him obvious discomfort. She muttered an apology for the comment to which he just waved a hand at. She hadn’t been lying though, he really was quite handsome for an older man, though not nearly so old as she’d previously guessed. Without all the hair he seemed to be closer to his early to mid-fifties, and his clean locks shone a nice honey-blond that was streaked through with gray along his temples. 

He also was exceedingly well muscled for someone who had lived under a bridge for several years. Hell, he looked liked he’d put on muscle just since she’d brought him home. What the hell? It didn’t help that her robe was definitely too small for him and hugged tight to every inch of him. 

Maggie dropped her eyes to where her hands were folded in her lap. She got a little  _ friendly _ when on narcotics, so it was best she get to bed before she thoroughly embarrassed herself. She said a quick goodnight, telling him to help himself to anything he needed, and then booked a hasty retreat to her bedroom. She locked the door for good measure. Sure, it was unlikely to actually keep him out if he had ill intentions but it made her feel at least a little better. She flopped down onto her bed in exhaustion, picking up her phone to shoot off a quick email informing her manager that she was ill and wouldn’t be coming in the next day. 

Really, she couldn’t go in until her face healed up. She didn’t like nosy questions, and there was nothing like a nasty bruise on your face to get people to come out of the woodwork trying to find out what happened. Luckily she had a few sick days saved up and her manager was a germaphobe that preferred for people to stay out of the office when ill. 

Maggie tossed her phone to the other side of her bed and snuggled down into the softness of her mattress, falling asleep instantly. 


End file.
